…Or, we could all just kick back, crack open an A.M. Ale and remember a better time. A time when guys like Tank Abbott and Wesley “Cabbage” Correira were considered elite athletes despite holding a little something extra around the midsection. A time when the term “brawler” could be used to describe someone’s fighting style without question or the smallest sense of irony. A time when men were men, dammit.

Abbott and Correira’s pair of bouts were quick and anything but painless, lasting a combined fight time of just three minutes and thirty-seven seconds, yet managed to capture everything that we loved about mid-2000′s MMA: wild haymakers, the muay Thai clinch, and gas tanks that expired before most of the audience could even find their seats. They were the kind of brawls that you might see in a John Wayne movie, but the fact that they were being contested inside a cage and for money instantly elevated them to near legendary status among true fans of the sport.

So rather than bore you with the same mundane news you could read anywhere else, let’s relive the visual poetry that was Cabbage vs. Tank, starting with their first encounter at UFC 45. After the jump: Abbott vs. Correira, pt. II.